Jesus H. Christ with a speculum, y’all. Two more attacks in the Republican war on women’s health have really got my blood boiling. First, to Oklahoma, where Tulsa World writes:

Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie, moved to amend a senior nutrition bill so that it prohibits independent contractors from distributing federal funds for a program that feeds mothers, babies and small children.

Why would Murphey do such a thing? Because Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma, based in Tulsa, is among the nine independent contractors that administer the federal Women, Infants and Children feeding program. Debate over the amendment made it clear Planned Parenthood was the target, observers say. Planned Parenthood has become a favorite target of the right wing lately over the abortion issue, even though Planned Parenthood in Tulsa doesn’t perform abortions.

You know how feminists always say the antis wants to force women to have babies but won’t do a damn thing to help feed/care for them? Yeah. Except now they’re actively trying to deprive babies of food as part of the “pro-life” movement. It’s downright sadistic.

A side-eye also goes to Indiana, which is poised to cut all funding to Planned Parenthood. Their House of Representatives approved a bill yesterday to cut off the $3 million the state distributes for family health programs. Governor Mitch Daniels, who has his eye on a possible Presidential bid, is likely to sign the bill just to bolster his woman-hating cred with the ultra-right base of the GOP. A similar defunding measure is also in the works in North Carolina. Now, in Oklahoma and Indiana, and everywhere else in the US, these GOP politicians’ wives and daughters will still be able to get their birth control and pap smears, and yes, even their abortions if it comes to it. But when it comes to women who rely on Planned Parenthood for health care—and even for feeding their families—Republicans are willing to shout “abortion” any time a doctor gets near their vaginas, just to have an excuse to score some points with their radical base.

Pro-life has nothing to do with saving lives. It’s all about controlling women. If we’re busy worrying about how to keep from getting pregnant, what to do when we do get pregnant and don’t want to be, and then how to feed/clothe/house/raise those babies we didn’t want, we don’t have the time or energy to worry about whether we’re making any progress on equality. Pro-lifers don’t give a shit about anyone’s life once they’re born, they only care about fetuses as long they’re an abstract thought and don’t exist outside the womb. Once life exists outside the womb, pro-lifers wash their hands of it, and it’s up to the woman they forced to bear it to figure out that life is going to continue to survive. Hypocrisy, thy name is pro-life.

Don’t even get me started on f*ing Mitch Daniels, guys. Or Indiana’s right-wing, for that matter. It’s not just Planned Parenthood under fire, but women’s rights in general, plus same-sex partnerships, plus education. Hell, even my bus routes are threatened. If they wanted the world to believe that they are backwards, narrow-minded and uneducated, they are doing a great job.

2) WHEN the abortion issue is divorced from other human rights issues, like when it becomes synonymous with all things Republican, your anger is justified. It’s really bad when care ends outside of the womb. There ARE clinics that offer high-quality care to low-income areas that do not offer abortions out of conscientious objection. Most Pro-Lifers agree we need more of those.

3) If the PP in question didn’t provide abortions, that’s an example of a politician being ridiculous – which happens Left and Right.

4) Consider that PERHAPS there could be some real quality to this argument that the humanity of a 3-wk old embryo with a beating heart and full genetic code should at least be ON THE TABLE. People who really think about this issue, Pro-Choice and Pro-Life, know that it’s complicated, and both sides have a hard time coming with a straight-up answer. Pro-Lifers have to argue that humanity is more than a fully developed brain/body, Pro-Choicers have to argue that their “moment of humanity” isn’t an arbitrary date.

5) Appreciation for nuance is a sign of intelligence; simplistic categorizations are the opposite. Being too polarized on either end is dangerous. Especially the wacko talking about violence. You’re just as bad as abortion clinic bombers.

Appreciation for nuance is a sign of intelligence; simplistic categorizations are the opposite. Being too polarized on either end is dangerous. Especially the wacko talking about violence. You’re just as bad as abortion clinic bombers.

Except Verity’s just talking as opposed to abortion clinic bombers who are bombing . A rather important distinction and one that you, despite your self-proclaimed intelligence and appreciation of nuance, seem to have missed.

M, don’t even. Violence as a reaction to oppression is not the same as violence as a means to oppress. And merely saying you feel like getting violent as a reaction to oppression (I agree!) is even less like violence as a means to oppress.

I don’t care if an embryo is human, if it has a beating heart (!) or its own genetic code. It has no right to exist inside another person who doesn’t want it there. Bye bye.

@M: Perhaps it’s mostly women who are most involved in the pro-life movement – perhaps. But the women involved are those women who are most controlled by the patriarchy, most invested in its status quo.

The abortion issue *is* complicated, perhaps more complicated than you give it credit for.

Just because there are women involved in the antichoice movement doesn’t negate that the fundamental effect of the movement is the control of women through their biology. Your assertion is fallacious. There are tons of women who are misogynists.

And the “personhood” of potential human life is NOT on the table when it comes at the DIRECT expense of ACTUAL women’s lives, especially my own. This is approaching the debate from the antichoice perspective alone and framing it using only a certain set of begging the question fallacious rhetoric.

And, FYI – the heart BEGINS to form in week 4. All four chambers and any blood aren’t present until sometime in weeks 5-6. In week 3, the connections are still being made between the fetus and Woman after the very recent implantation and true beginning of pregnancy. There is no heart to beat in week 3, only a layer of cells that may eventually differentiate into a heart and may then begin to beat.

First, the term pro-life is a lie. Anti-choicers have proved over and over that the only lives that matter to them are fetal ones. The lives of women, people on death row, victims of gun violence…those lives mean nothing.

Second, look at who’s driving anti-choice movements and legislation in this country. It’s men. Some anti organizations may try the ploy of putting a woman in front, but there is no doubt at all that this is a male-led and male-driven movement. And even if it weren’t, so what? The anti-choice agenda is to deny women the ability to control our lives and our bodies. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it, it’s evil and wrong.

Never once in my life have I heard of a legitimate women’s health clinic that refused to do abortions out of “conscience”. If M is referring to crisis pregnancy “clinics,” calling them clinics is another lie. They are operated by religious fanatics who are more often than not completely untrained laypeople. There is no intent to provide real health care. Instead, the intent is to terrorize, intimidate, and guilt vulnerable women into gong through with an unwanted pregnancy.

M is trying, as antis always do, to change the subject. When it comes to abortion, or any other reproductive health care issue, the one and only subject is women. Period.

Finally, M, how dare you compare words to acts? I agree that words can be deadly. But Verity was clearly not being literal, whereas antis have literally commanded each other to murder abortion providers, and have literally done so. To my knowledge, there has never-ever-been an instance of an abortion rights supporter physically attacking an anti beyond pushes or shoves.

Anti-choice is anti-woman, anti-child, and anti-family. M’s post is nothing but an exercise in disingenuousness and propaganda.

@M – You do understand that high-quality care includes contraception, right? Condoms? The pill? Maybe even an IUD? If you want to say that most “pro-life” organizations support increased access to contraception and the education needed to use it for poor women, you have to know that that’s blatantly untrue.

SarahMC has already given the answer I would have – that a foetus, regardless of its level of humanity, does not have the right for a woman to be forced to yield up her body to it. As was remarked in another forum a while back, even the dead can’t have their bodies used without their prior consent. The anti-choice position is one that positions women as having fewer rights than a corpse.

Our ( by ‘our’ I mean Australia) lovely Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, is the (amazingly sexist, misogynistic and AWFUL)person who in his role in the previous government was instrumental in having RU486 banned. So – Australian women HAVE to wait until week 8 to have a (surgical)termination. It’s all about how to make things harder for women and their families.